by Don Hall

The country’s infrastructure is failing.

The power grids, the bridges, the roads, the viaducts are all so old and unattended that the bones that bind us are all crumbling.

So we struggle to find fault. We blame the corporations, we blame the government, we bark for accountability and action. Yet, for all of the energy it takes to fall into the viper pit of outrage and despair, the infrastructure remains broken and falling apart. It may be (and is likely the case) that it is the fault of the corporations and the politicians that this network of essentials is going south yet, for all that rightness in our finger pointing and screaming, nothing gets fixed.

We can either demand accountability or take responsibility.

Out of the country’s 900,000 police, there is a tiny percentage who are violent bigots or fearful incompetents and they are killing innocent people.

We march in the streets for a dwindling amount of time. We go online and rant about it. We seek justice, we seek reform, we expect those in certain places of power to affect these changes to “do their jobs.” Yet reform is slow and seems ineffective. For all of our righteous rage, these police still collect pensions and work as police and kill innocents.

We can either demand accountability or take responsibility.

Income inequality is one of the top three problems Americans face every single day. It affects everyone — white, black, brown, male, female, queer, trans — we all suffer the consequences of billionaires scooping up more billions and using the government to both keep them and prevent the rest from sharing them. We organize, we castigate, we write IN ALL CAPS to demonstrate our thirst for change. Yet nothing changes.

Demand accountability or take responsibility.

Accountability is about making someone else do what we want them to do.
Responsibility is about making ourselves do what needs to be done.

Time to make a choice.